


The Preacher

by LadyAmarra



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Heaven, Hell, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-11-24 06:07:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAmarra/pseuds/LadyAmarra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The old man is a hunter, Stiles is pretty sure of that, and his face is weatherworn and wrinkled. His skin tells the story of many years in the merciless sun, of near constant worry and too many too close calls to count. He holds a rosary with beads the colour of old blood between his hands, prays reverently, and stares, lips quietly moving, right into Stiles’ soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**PROLOGUE**

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_

_With one hand on the trigger, one hand on the cross_

_Jesus and his family are two things he’s lost_

Stiles is tied to a creaky old chair with the string of an old washing line. It’s a little too tight and cuts into his skin where the thin red-white plastic lining has cracked and fallen away. He’s pretty sure his nose is broken and the pain radiates out through his skull and into his neck, into his shoulders and chest. It makes breathing harder than it should be with the blood still running down the back of his throat and over his lips, and helps not at all against the panic attack barely contained below the surface. He fights the pain that wants to force him to close his eyes, fights the urge to suck up more air, fights the fear, and tries to focus on the old pale-haired man kneeling before him instead.

 

The old man is a hunter, Stiles is pretty sure of that. His face is weatherworn and wrinkled. His skin tells the story of many years in the merciless sun, of near constant worry and too many too close calls to count. He holds a rosary with beads the colour of old blood between his hands, prays reverently, and stares, lips quietly moving, right into Stiles’ soul.

 

There is something crazy in the dark stormy eyes which glare at Stiles from the shadowed face before him. There is darkness, a gaping hole and at its bottom there’s something howling wild and hurt, wounded and terrible, made from oily blackness and pain. Stiles can’t name what he knows must have once been there to cover up that darkness, but it is, without a doubt, exactly what one or the other supernatural creature must have ripped from this Hunter’s heart to make the old man bat-shit crazy enough to come to Beacon Hills and take Stiles right from the parking lot of the grocery store.

 

Half a dozen people must have seen the man grab Stiles and how the kidnapper then forced him to throw away phone and keys before quickly pushing him into the trunk with an old Colt pointed at his head. The store cameras must have recorded how the crazy, wild-haired man all but tore out of the parking lot and onto the road. The world must search for him, for Stiles, for the Sheriff’s only son, and his father must be half crazy with worry by now.

 

Let alone the pack.

 

Or Derek.

 

Werewolves can hear the heart of their mates for miles.  And wherever this cellar is, no matter how far away from Beacon Hills, Stiles knows Derek is coming and the rage of the wolf will be terrible once he finds them down here. If Stiles could manage more than a pained gurgling right now, he would assure the hunter before him that taking Stiles must have been testament of a truly spectacular death wish, and that, one way or the other, this will not end well. The Truce between hunters and the Hale pack might still be fesh, but the hunter community out there knows not to mess with The Code on Argent territory. And this? Taking the mate of the Hale pack's Alpha is not only breaking of The Code, but a declaration of war.

 

Stiles can’t shake the feeling though that a bloody, painful death by whoever will arrive first, Police, Argents or Werewolves, is exactly what the crazed man before him prays for. He has the air of someone going for suicide by Police - or in this case, werewolf.

 

“You’re not supposed to mingle with them,” the hunter speaks softly, leans in closer. He eerily reminds Stiles of someone telling a child what not to do, of a parent giving good advice. It’s downright anticlimactic in compare to the vibe of chaotic rage the man radiated as he had broken Stiles’ nose just minutes before.

 

“We can not break God’s order,” he says.

 

Stiles wants to roll his eyes at the words, thinks of religious assholes preaching prejudice all over the world, of churches picketing funerals and abusing the bible to justify hate, but the movement hurts too much. God, it really hurts, and for a moment Stiles allows himself to close his eyes and scrunch them up in pain. They burn and his face has started to swell up, tears mix up with the blood from his nose. As he opens them again after a moment of trying to get his breathing back under control, the man has come even closer, curled in above Stiles’ lap as if he wants to share a secret with a good old friend.

 

“The Father does not want us to be with those in the darkness, will never allow us to be happy, will punish us if we stray from the light,” he speaks, softer than before. “He speaks of love, but his mercy never has been unconditional. You know that, do you?”

 

The old man leans back, searches out Stiles’ eyes as if he hopes for an answer, but Stiles is still too busy to even force air into his lungs at all to answer. There must be something in Stiles’ eyes though, confusion most likely because this makes no sense, and the old hunter just shakes his head, rolls his eyes heavenward.

 

“Lord have mercy for he does not even know,” he whispers. If possible the wicked, dark eyes of the hunter become even more crazed as he fixes his stare back onto Stiles. “Everything has an order, boy, heaven and hell, good or bad, for us humans it is really a matter of doing good or bad to make our place in the Lord’s Kingdom, but for them…”

 

The man closes his eyes, hangs his head. He lifts his hands and folds them up anew right there in front of Stiles’ chest. His knuckles are split where he delivered the blow to Stiles’ face, and otherwise scarred over from so many times the sking must have been busted open before that. He visibly steels himself to take a deep breath, fill his lungs with more of the stale wet air, before the old man speaks again.

 

“No matter how close you tie them to you, what laws you break, how much you love them, the lord will never allow you to be with them forever,” he speaks and his voice sounds like gravel. “There is an order, and a soul can’t break it.”

 

There is a howl in the distance, a warning and a promise at the same time and part of Stiles rejoices at the idea that help is on the way, but there is still something about this hunter, about the way he has lowered his head to Stiles’ chest and shakes from barely controlled sobs. He can hear the howls without a doubt, and as he looks up again, he looks heartbroken, hurt, and shivers as a cacophony of other howls echo through the air outside. He is not scared however, there is no fear. Instead, his face contorts into something Stiles would have expected of a man standing beside the grave of a loved one, mourning their loss instead of a hunter about to face a pack of werewolves. 

 

“No matter how much you want to,” the man says. “You can not stay with them forever.”

 

Maybe it is the blow to his face, maybe the onset of a panic attack he has been fighting against since he had climbed in the trunk in front of the grocery store, but Stiles can't help but wonder if this is truely a hunter or someone else. Someone a little bit closer to home than Stiles might be comfortable with. 

 

“What do you mean?” Stiles’ voice sounds wet and rough beyond all recognition as he speaks. The man has tears in his eyes as he leans in again, presses his brow against Stiles' bloody chest almost as if he seeks comfort from Stiles, almost as if he's begging for forgiveness for his sins. 

 

“They’re damned,” the hunter says. “All of them.”

 

For a moment, everything is quiet. The silence gives the man’s word the aura of a terrible truth revealed, of something unshakable and terrifying, too large yet for Stiles to wrap his brain around, and then all hell breaks loose around them.

 

TBC

 


	2. One

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later, in bed with Derek curled around him, Stiles remembers.

It is the pack that tracks the scent for miles and it is Derek who finds him - he would find Stiles everywhere - but it must be the rest of the Sheriff’s department that rushes in for the rescue, not a pack of angry wolves. 

The reason is simple: someone has indeed seen the scene of Stiles’ kidnapping, and numerous cameras have recorded the man driving away with the Sheriff’s son in the trunk. The Press got involved within the hour, even if it was only the local, small TV station, and after that a pack of werewolves taking back their Alpha’s mate would have brought too much unwanted attention. 

Still, it makes no difference. Most of the Sheriff’s department is either related to the Argents somehow, or connected to the pack, or actually is part of the pack, and the few that are not involved somehow still know that there are things going on in Beacon Hills County that should better be left to those who know a thing or two about those creatures walking in the shadows - the great showdown with the Alpha pack a few years back had taught them that, if not much else. 

The old man, the hunter, does not know that. 

In one moment he kneels before Stiles on the ground, the red beads of a rosary looped around his hands, the next he reaches around the tied up younger man and presses the symbol of devotion and belief into the numb fingers of his captive. 

Stiles knows a thing or to about believing into something, about the power of will, and he can feel the power of the old man, so human, sad and bitter with despair, licking along the skin of his palm as the man closes Stiles’ fingers around the beads. 

His face looks so much older in that moment, and so tired and so lost. The light above them flickers and outside tires screech, but inside the cellar room, everything is quiet. Somehow all the sound has been sucked out of the damp place, and all Stiles can see, all he can focus on is the overwhelming sadness in the hunter’s eyes, now overshadows by the something Stiles thinks must be a sense of resignation. 

This is a broken heart if he has ever seen one, and Stiles can feel every crack, every tear in the façade, radiating from rosary in his palm, through his skin and up his arm, right into his own chest. 

The man lifts the Colt he kept in the back of his pockets, lifts it against his own skull, and then closes his troubled, dark eyes. Stiles can hear the door of the house above break into a million splinters, knows it must break under the combined force of Derek and Boyd, both part of the Sheriff Department by now, and undoubtedly followed closely by Stiles’ aging father and half a dozen other Deputies. 

It’s the sound of the Colt that shatters the last of the silence, closely followed by a splatter of brain and blood and bone hitting the wall, and the thud of a dead body falling to the ground. 

The words the man said in his last minutes, whispered against Stiles’ chest, still vibrate in his ears, run around inside his mind like wild animals on the hunt for something. He tries to make sense, tries to somehow understand, but the truth his, deep down he already has. 

Deep down in the back of his mind Stiles has a suspicion. It seems wrong and cruel, somehow crazy even, and he has never before thought about it, not really. However, now and here, as he turns to look at the sleeping face of his mate not inches away, Stiles starts to wonder. 

With all they’ve seen in the last years, he has no doubt there is a hell. He’s seen demons firsthand, seen their twisted ways and dark oily eyes, so there is no doubt. And where there is darkness, it seems only logical that good people, good souls like his mother, must go somewhere else – to heaven, or to paradise, or just somewhere where there is no pain and no cancer anymore. He knows that, and until now he never doubted that Derek or any or the other wolves will fit into the same system, but then again, what if that is wrong? 

What if the man, his kidnapper with the strange dark emptiness within his eyes, is right and they go somewhere else? 

He doesn't want to think about it, but finds himself unable to stop. 

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

It is no surprise that Deaton proofs to be useless. Maybe the reason for that is that Stiles does not know how to ask without alarming the Veterinarian and Shaman to what questions really bother him deep down. The last thing he wants is for his family, his pack, to wonder if the few hours in the hands of his kidnapper might have caused damage beyond what they can see on Stiles' bruised skin.

On the other hand, when he pushes Derek and the others away for a few hours in the following days, and sinks into the quiet semi-darkness of their study, attention solemnly focused on their collection of books and scrolls, it is their worry and guilt he exploits to do his own thing in peace. 

He hates the worry in his father's eyes, the anxiety with which the betas treat Stiles when he actually does leave the study for a while, and maybe most of all, the pain and guilt rolling off of Derek every time he speaks all hushed and careful - but the curiosity is like a coil of snakes in the pit of Stiles' belly, it will not let him rest. 

What he finds seems surreal, though, and this, here, on the faces of the people he loves, the guilt and the love and the fear, the capability to feel such emotion, is what breaks Stiles, makes him think it all is a bunch of dirty, ugly lies, because all that makes what he discovers testament to how unfair and wicked and cruel the order of things truly is. 

It takes some digging. And as he finally finds a copy of what he thinks must be the text all the sources refer to, all that is left is the bad photocopy of a picture taken decades ago. It takes him days, and Danny's best photo-software, to get the script clear enough to read, and another week to be really sure he does not read the words wrong on top of that. 

After, he wishes he hadn't found it at all. 

What he reads is that the man, the Preacher, how he comes to call him, has been right. 

There is a heaven. 

There is a hell. 

And there is a order of things that a simple human can not break, but that is only the beginning. It gets so much worse than that. 

What he reads is surprisingly simple: while humanity are the sons of Adam, Demons the souls of humans fallen from the righteous path just like Lucifer fell from the heavens, everything else, every other supernatural creature there is, has come from somewhere else, from someone else, and into the kingdom of that being, they shall all return upon the day they die. 

The text uses no direct name, but from what he gathers of the concept, the closest parallel English has to offer is, as strange as the idea is, the Christian idea of Purgatory. 

What the text says is that Derek, as loving and as full of guilt and pain as he is, suffers from the illusion of a soul he does not have. Even worse, as a born wolf, he has never even had a soul; it's all a matter of conditioning by the society he was born into, which, and Stiles has to think of Peter here, can be forgotten as easily as it has been constructed. 

It's crazy, he thinks, because it seems impossible that all the emotions, all the loss and hurt Derek has suffered, have been nothing but illusions, concepts Derek had learned to feel to fit into this world, not things he had actually been able to feel at the beginning. 

There is no chance that Derek is only a beast, a supernatural being, so much closer to a demon since purgatory is so much closer to hell in the order of things. It simply can not be. 

But if it is, Stiles realizes, if these ancient writings tell him the truth, the moment Scott and Isaac, Boyd, Erica, Jackson, and everyone else were turned into a wolf, their soul became nothing but a memory. Furthermore, all those times they wondered about immunity the truth was that these souls, that Lydia, had won out against infection, and albeit evidently damaged and a little broken in the long run, her soul is still, in fact, a human soul. 

And if all of that is true, and Stiles hopes, no, prays, it is not, then no matter what they will do, no matter how good the wolves are, how many souls they rescue from demons and other dark things in the long run, not one of them will have a chance at something good beyond their human lives. 

There will be a endless land of darkness, a endless fight, a never ending hunt, from what he gathers, and very little else. 

And there is no way to cross the lines, not for a human soul. 

That night, as he rests beside Derek, stares at the ceiling of their den, he fights with tears. 

He understands now. He understands why things are how they are; why, when the wolves are truly angry, anything there is in their eyes is the beast, and only very little of their humanity left. He begins to understand so many changes in the people he knows, so much darkness and cruelty that came so easily to them when they needed it. 

When he thinks about it, about the Preacher, doing what he did makes sense as well. Hell is so much closer than purgatory, probably as close as a human soul can get to a beast, as close to crossing the line as he can get without actually turning into one of the beasts himself. Maybe it is about punishment, about forgetting the connection of mates, blurring the lines by becoming a demon. He has no idea, but he very firmly promises himself that this is not a way to go for him. 

But then, this promise is also the solution, he figures. 

For as long as Stiles can remember, or at least, for as long as he knows that werewolves are a thing, he has never toyed with the idea to be anything but himself, anything but a fragile human. Even when the spark inside him sets him above the ordinary men and women, he has always cherished his humanity, and in a way, has been aware of how special his soul must be when it could do the things it did, made him who he is. 

But if that means he will remain alone after all of this is over - and he will never forget how easily it could end, not as long as he still dreams of all those people they couldn't get to in time. No matter if heaven or hell, he won't be with his family, with his pack, and yeah, the logical conclusion and the resulting decision is a easy one. 

He reaches out, touches Derek where the swell of his biceps meets the meat of his shoulder, and calls his name quietly. 

And in the quiet dark of their den, still bruised and more than a bit broken, he asks for the bite. 

 

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't throw things at me for ending it here. I know there might be a lot more to this verse than just this. Derek could ask why, say no, things could happen, good things, bad things, you never know. One could die before Stiles is turned, and the other could set out to find him. So many possible paths to take from here on out, but I will not write them. If you want to, go ahead, go wild. (just maybe tell me, because I really want to know where this could go) 
> 
> Cheers,  
> -ami

**Author's Note:**

> As you may or may not have guessed, I am playing with the Trinity order of afterworlds as established in Supernatural. Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. Let's pretend, the same rules apply here. I bet you know where I am going. 
> 
> Inspired by James N Commons Song The Preacher 
> 
> Also, not beta-ed. It was sort of a spur of the moment thing to cure a episode of serious depression. I frankly don't know why it makes me want to hurt a bunch of Teenagers, but it does.


End file.
